Today’s session of Prime Minister’s Questions was pointless. Describing any session as pointless is in itself a little pointless, as it takes you into the sort of territory where, like the author of Ecclesiastes, you end up declaring everything meaningless.
But today really was a pointless session. The most obvious example of pointless behaviour came from the Tory side, with Conservative MPs deciding that they should return to the old days of roaring and jeering just as Jeremy Corbyn was asking questions about cuts to tax credits. David Cameron helped them out by chortling with exasperation as he responded without answering to yet another question from the Labour leader about whether he could guarantee that no family would be worse off as a result of the tax credit cuts.
It’s not clear what the point of the jeering and chuckling from the Tory side was. Perhaps the party had decided that it might unsettle Jeremy Corbyn. A more brittle politician might have responded in the way that they expected. But Corbyn has quite an impressive amount of self-confidence, which means that instead of getting angry or nervy, he just glares at the rowdy Tory benches until they stop. Within four minutes of the session starting, he had already delivered two of his finest stares-from-the-blackboard at noisy MPs. As he worked his way through the questions, Corbyn made clear that he believed he was dealing with a particularly difficult crop of year nines, who despite having mastered the basic tenets of personal hygiene that sometimes elude year eight pupils, were still struggling with discipline and the importance of application and respect.
The stares grew in length and intensity. At one point, Corbyn called for the head of year, Speaker Bercow, to intervene, but the Labour leader does seem to have largely taken control of the management of the Chamber’s behaviour as well as the questions that are being asked. And then, as Cameron took questions on the NHS, Corbyn decided that the best thing to do would be to unleash a strategic loss of temper to teach the students a lesson. He bellowed his final question furiously as the year nines jeered.
The exchanges showed that the Tories are not handling particularly well the mess that Labour is in. Their initial strategy had been to speak with sorrow of the destruction of the Labour party and to allow Corbyn to cause the damage himself. But their glee at the constant confusion and weird HR decisions has got the better of them: like year nines who are just too excited that it’s Friday afternoon, they’ve got overexcited. Corbyn didn’t quite tell them that they were letting themselves down, but that’s what was happening.
However, equally pointless was the decision of the Labour leader to return to the tax credits question again. That’s not because the issue isn’t important, and it is certainly politically important for the Labour leader to try to get a commitment from the Prime Minister that no families will be worse off once the amended tax credit changes are announced.
But Corbyn used three questions to ask this when the Prime Minister had already said that he would have an answer in three weeks’ time at the Autumn Statement and not before. The Labour leader didn’t manage to move the debate beyond the first ‘answer’, and even that didn’t tell us anything new that we hadn’t learned last week. What was said last week was said again this week, and will doubtless be said again in weeks to come. So from this PMQs at least, there really is nothing new under the sun.
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